A PASSAGE from Anne Frank’s diary will be read aloud at all football matches in Italy this week as authorities try to clamp down on shocking displays of anti-Semitism by fans of the Rome club Lazio.
Lazio supporters on Sunday littered the Stadio Olimpico in the capital with images of Anne Frank, the young diarist who died in the Holocaust, wearing the jersey of city rivals Roma, who share the ground.
Right-wing Lazio fans associate their Roma counterparts with being left-wing and Jewish.
Cleaners found the stickers on Monday and police have opened a criminal inquiry. The diary reading will be combined with a minute of silence before Serie A, B and C matches this week, plus amateur and youth games over the weekend.
The diary passage reads: “I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions.
“And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquillity will return ... ”
Lazio president Claudio Lotito sought to disassociate the club from its hardcore “ultra” fans by visiting Rome’s main synagogue.
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